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Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Future head of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Carrie Rethlefsen, decided she would make a "statement" by wearing a shirt to her high school with the words, "I (Heart) My Vagina" emblazoned on it. This article, appearing in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, didn't make clear whether Ms. Rethlefsen is as stupid as her motto would indicate. But if I were a betting man ...

WINONA, MINN. -- After all the radio interviews, after all the newspaper stories and television stories and hundreds and hundreds of e-mails, Carrie Rethlefsen ended her lesson in free speech and democracy Tuesday by doing a simple thing:

She walked into school with her "I [heart] My Vagina" T-shirt's message in plain sight. About 40 classmates had walked in just seconds before after turning their T-shirts inside out.

And, minutes later, Rethlefsen emerged with another lesson learned. The administrators at Winona High School mean what they say.

They sent her home for the day.

"I'm happy," said Rethlefsen, 18. "I got my message out there."

What began as a simple act of defiance -- she wore an "I [heart] My Vagina" button to school to raise awareness about violence against women, even after officials told her not to -- evolved into a platform to talk about women's rights, the fight against violence and freedom of speech that she couldn't have imagined two weeks ago. (link)

Poor fool. Her vagina has become a political statement. To think what miscief she's going to stir up when she discovers her breasts.

Man shot himself 5 times, then jumped By Georgina Gustin Of the St. Louis Post-DispatchA man whose body was pulled from the Mississippi River on Sunday had shot himself five times with a .22-caliber handgun before driving from his Godfrey home to the Clark Bridge in Alton and fatally throwing himself into the waters below, authorities said. Franklin E. Carver, 67, of the 2700 block of Greenwood Lane, shot himself five times - three times in the head and twice in the chest - inside his home Wednesday, but none of the shots was immediately fatal, authorities said. Carver then got into his customized van and drove 10 minutes to the Clark Bridge, where he parked in the bicycle lane and jumped off the south side of the bridge as a frantic motorist called 911 from a cell phone. "This is probably the most unusual suicide case I've ever seen in my career," said Lt. David Hayes of the Alton Police Department. "It's a bizarre case; it really is." The Madison County coroner said Monday that preliminary autopsy results indicate Carver, who had several convictions, died of drowning. During the autopsy, performed Sunday, doctors pulled five small-caliber bullets that had lodged in Carver's body. The three shots to the head did not penetrate the skull, while one shot to the chest missed vital organs and the other struck the liver. (link)

Self-defense experts will advise you to use a .22 caliber weapon if you want to hurt - and really piss off - an attacker. It isn't much good beyond doing either. That's why, when my daughter decided she wanted to buy a handgun and keep it at the house for use against an intruder, and actually wanted to drop him in his tracks once and for all, should it become necessary, I recommended this.Franklin E. Carver learned this valuable lesson ... the hard way. Not that he gave himself much time to absorb the info.

Google, the largest and most successful internet search engine in history (and the owner of this website, Blogger.com), has taken a stand ... against conservatives.

Google Refuses Conservative Ad, Similar to Liberal AdBy Jeff Johnson, CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer ... William Greene, president of RightMarch.com, accused Google of censoring conservative ads that accompany search results."We were using Google, typed in 'Tom DeLay,' and saw all the Google AdWords on the right-hand side that came up there and they were all anti-DeLay ads," Greene said.

Greene decided to buy an advertisement supporting DeLay and to try to spend enough money to get his ad to come up on the top of the list."So we did that, and then we decided that - as part of this campaign to expose the hypocrisy of the Democrats who are attacking DeLay - we decided to do a specific ad against Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader," Greene explained. He noticed an anti-DeLay ad for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that stated, "The Truth About Tom DeLay - Learn about DeLay's many scandals and help us clean up the House! dccc.org." Greene attempted to purchase a similar ad that stated, "Truth About Nancy Pelosi - Learn about Pelosi's many scandals and help us clean up the House! RightMarch.com""That's all we did," Greene told Cybercast News Service. "We took the liberal ad and changed the words to make it a conservative ad." But Googlerefused the ad."At this time, Google policy does not permit ad text that advocates against an individual, group or organization," Google wrote Greene on the administration page of his ad account. "As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site." (link)

Now Google has every right to control - and even censor - the content of its website. It is a right still guaranteed in the Constitution, last time I looked, despite the best efforts of Google's (apparent) friends on the left.But I have (limited) control over this weblog as well. You'll notice that a change to the format of From On High has taken place. The Ads by Google banner off to the left of this site is gone. You see, I chose sides long ago as well.By the way, if you are unable to access this site beginning tomorrow, you'll understand why. Welcome to America, baby.

It has now become clear, with a guilty plea having been offered up by Pfc. Lynndie England in the Abu Ghraib extravaganza, that the story involved what all sane people knew it involved all along: poorly disciplined guards in an Iraqi prison housing terrorists and generally bad people were partying in a manner that did not reflect well on the military. Or on the USA as a whole, for that matter. In testimony before a military judge on Monday, England summed up the whole scandal - for those not blinded by hatred.

“I had a choice, but I chose to do what my friends wanted me to,” she said, entering her pleas a day before the start of her trial.

The judge asked her about a photo depicting her smiling and pointing at a naked detainee's genitals while smoking a cigarette. England said she replied, “No, no way” at first when a fellow soldier asked her to pose for the picture. “But they were being very persistent, bugging me, so I said, ‘OK, whatever,”' she told the judg e.(link)

England is one of seven military guards to plead guilty to having abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib.So, here's the whole story, as outlined by countless investigations;A prison being used by the U.S. military in Iraq to house dangerous terrorists was poorly run. Military discipline was lax (in the extreme) allowing enlisted personnel, particularly the seven who have plead and one other soldier yet to go to trial, to abuse prisoners in their charge.End of story.Oh, wait. I mentioned those who are filled with hate toward our country. Here is what the opinion page editors at the Roanoke Times have to say about the scandal;

No matter what official investigations have concluded, a repugnant de facto policy of abuse emerged from widespread failure in moral leadership.

This is not to condone or excuse the actions of people like England. Whether she was following orders or succumbing to peer pressure, her actions were wrong.

But she is not alone.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was wrong in his previous role as White House counsel when he wrote a memo that sought to find legal justifications to permit the use of torture in interrogations against al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, while finding the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete."

Gonzales, though, was himself only attempting to find legal cover for the attitudes of both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush, who didn't want to be restrained by the niceties of international law.

England and her fellow soldiers are the ones going to prison. But true accountability clearly lies much further up the chain of command. (link)

Every person who served at Abu Ghraib has testified that the decision to abuse prisoners there was localized to one cell block and one group of guards.Every investigation, over twenty now, has found the outrage to be an aberration, localized to that prison and to those charged (and to a general who was overseeing the prison at the time, for not instilling strict discipline among the ranks and for allowing the abuse to occur on her watch).But the solons at the Times know better. They weren't there but they know what really happened. They know what those who participated in the abuse had to say about their actions, but the Times' editors know what they were really thinking. They know that the many reports turned up no link between administration memos and the Abu Ghraib scandal, but they know what was really written between the lines and what was really going through the minds of Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W Bush.Please. Give it up. You tried to make something more of the story than was ever there. You failed. Isn't it time to go back to the Dick Cheney and his Halliburton connections scandal?